You got a point here, I agree.
That's exactly how I make sense of this oddity, too.
Was NCC-1701 active for 40 years?
- Thread starter Brannigan
- Start date
You got a point here, I agree.
That's exactly how I make sense of this oddity, too.
Maybe the E-D computer is not that intelligent deliberately so? Scotty, as the chief engineering, thinks the Enterprise is his ship at least subconsciously. That could come out when he was drunk.
No, it's precisely my point. As I said, the computer specifically said that there were five Federation starships that bore the name Enterprise and asked Scotty which one did he want to see. Scotty told it which one and the computer complied, which leaves no room for argument on the issue of how many Federation starships there were at the time.
That's not true at all, really. Different organizations have different reasons for doing things. Some are similar, some are very different and done for no more reason that it suits that particular organization at a particular time. Now that is a historical pattern.
I'm not. See below response.
All that does is go right back to what I said that not everything is done the same way, especially by organizations that are centuries apart. Similar does not mean identical.
There are many ships that have served for 50 + years, and many more that could have, if it had been decided to keep them in service. Presumably a starship could easily last 50-100 years or more. Provided that the necessary maintenance of the ship were carried out over that time. How much of the original ship would be left after 150 years of refits and repairs is not clear though!
As for how many ships were called Enterprise, it really doesn't matter. What the script had Majel Roddenberry say to James Doohan is completely irrelevant. They hadn't done the show "Enterprise" at that time, so they didn't think to add it in. Were there no Enterprises from Archer to Pike? I guess not. But if future writers want to say there were, it wouldn't be a problem. I am sure they would have told Majel to tell Scotty about them, had they known!
As for how many ships were called Enterprise, it really doesn't matter. What the script had Majel Roddenberry say to James Doohan is completely irrelevant. They hadn't done the show "Enterprise" at that time, so they didn't think to add it in. Were there no Enterprises from Archer to Pike? I guess not. But if future writers want to say there were, it wouldn't be a problem. I am sure they would have told Majel to tell Scotty about them, had they known!
I've always felt that how long a particular ship is in service depends on the kind of life it's had and that it could vary quite widely from ship to ship, even between those of the same class.
The TNG Technical Manual suggested that the Enterprise-D could have lasted 100 years, but I think that's only under the most ideal conditions throughout her entire lifetime (in the "All Good Things..." timeline, the ship was to have been decommissioned after only 20+ years, possibly indicating that she may have had a very rough life in that version of events).
Which, in the context, of what we've been discussing, is irrelevant. MY point -- which you skipped over for reasons known only to you -- is that no one has ever established as fact that only the Federation Starfleet has ships named Enterprise, nor that other ships with the same name served other organizations in a similar capacity (as auxiliaries, training vessels or attached to Earth Spaceguard or something) that would account for the B-C or C-D gap. Neither Ben Sisko nor Scotty ever state that the Enterprise they're talking about is a Federation vessel, it's simply assumed by the person (or thing) they're speaking to. It isn't a list of "every starship named Enterprise," it's only a list of Starfleet exploration cruisers in the 1701 series.
And yet, Riker and Troi managed to simulate the NX-01's final mission SOMEHOW, so obviously the computer can show you non-Federation Enterprises if you ask it the right way. And if the computer neglected to mention NX-01 during "Relics" then what ELSE might it have left out of that list?
Was the NX-01 ever referred to onscreen as a starship? I seem to remember everyone calling it a Warp 5 ship and the NX class was a experimental class of ships, just like the Excelsior was NX-2000 until it was converted to a regular warp drive then it became NCC-2000.
Also, the Excelsior class ships were around well into the 24th Century with the Lakota showing up in DS9 giving the Defiant a run for it's money and all of the Excelsior class ships being destroyed in the Dominion War so they either lasted a long time or Starfleet kept manufacturing them for nearly 100 years.
Also, the Excelsior class ships were around well into the 24th Century with the Lakota showing up in DS9 giving the Defiant a run for it's money and all of the Excelsior class ships being destroyed in the Dominion War so they either lasted a long time or Starfleet kept manufacturing them for nearly 100 years.
Yes, Archer called it a starship on numerous occasions.
The "NX" in NX-01 does not refer to an experimental class of ship, even though it had an experimental warp 5 engine. That was only for Federation Starfleet vessels. "NX" is the class name of the ship, just like the "J" and "DY" classes.
Yet, the dedication plaque only identifies it as a "spacecraft".
Of course, Archer can call his ship whatever he likes, but the dedication plaque says differently and is probably the accurate designation.
Bob
No, its the whole point of the discussion. From the very start, it was a simple case of there being at the time that there were five Federation starships that have been called Enterprise and Scotty wanted to see one of them. He was shown one of them after specifying which one. Case closed.
Anything else is irrelevant.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Which again shows how TPTB didn't understand their own franchise. The X desig in reality and in the trekverse (EXCELSIOR in SFS, PROMETHEUS on VOYAGER, DEFIANT on DS9 come readily to mind) did indicate experimental or test-bed, and this just makes that much more of a hash of the trekverse (which from what I saw seemed to be ENTERPRISE's specialty ... crossing Is and dotting Ts while letting the whole essay stink from here to eternity.
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After watching ENT's "First Flight," I tend to think it was called the NX-class because it came out of the initial NX Project to develop the Warp 5 engine. The program may have officially began with the experimental NX-Alpha and only a proposed class of starships if the project was successful...
Yes, I know all that. But he asked if the ship was referred to as a "starship" in the show, and I replied that it was.
Oh, you'll get no argument from me about that. Why TPTB didn't just create whole new naming conventions (United Earth Space Navy, UES Enterprise, CVN-701, etc.) instead of keeping the Starfleet moniker and similar registry nomenclatures is beyond me. It's like they just didn't even care.
Unfortunately the show never showed any other class or registry schemes for any other ships. We're simply told in dialogue that the class name for Archer's ship is "NX" but without any context. Nobody ever mentioned that that "X" stood for "experimental;" are we just supposed to assume that based on Henry's engine? Were other Starfleet ships given letter class names? L class? M class? LX class? And does "NX" actually stand for anything?
I know, a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. I just wanted to mention this other detail.
My impression had always been that post-TOS the concept of alphabetic classes (suggested in "The Menagerie I") had never been pursued.
But whatever the "N" in "NCC" stands for, it stands to reason that the "N" in "NX" is the same and part of the registry, not of a class.
Bob
The very start was here, where I pointed out to you that discussions of "ships named Enterprise" rarely if ever specify that they are referring to Federation ships named Enterprise. Scotty didn't, and neither did the DTI agents. Even the E-D's dedication plaque doesn't specify that.
Therefore those references cannot and should not be considered to be concise or authoritative since it's clear that they are only true in a relatively narrow context. There could be and probably are MANY starships that have born the name Enterprise, but are excluded from the list because they're not major vessels or were never commissioned by the Federation.
The model designers were thinking of some of the other Starfleet ships as the NV-class and the like. Using a variation of the numbering on airplanes in the United States. Much like how the NCC-1701's hull number was originally based on aircraft numbers (the N for United States and one of the C for Soviet Union). They kept Jeffieries style of numbering it seems, rather that the movie era and beyond style numbers. (If I recall, had they kept the Matt Jefferies style, each class would have had a different numbering system, and different types of ships would have different letter before the numbers. That changed entirely with the movies, and to some extent from Franz Jospef's book.)
^ IIRC, the Intrepid model had a registry number that started with "NC" as did the Sarajevo class from "Daedalus."
According to Jefferies the first two digits would indicate the Federation Cruiser (or Starship) design series, i.e.
- 17 for the Enterprise Starship Class
- 18 for the Miranda Starship Class
- 19 for the Soyuz Starship Class
- 20 for the Excelsior Starship Class
Bob
Well, as you point out Starfleet was still using old Class J training vessels in TOS, but that isn't definite proof that the letter system had been completely phased out by TOS.
Possibly, but without further context (which ENT failed to provide), we don't know for sure.
No, that's a myth, based on a model kit of the "Intrepid" type which was labeled with "NV-01." Neither of the pre-NX-01 Earth Starfleet vessel types were given registry numbers or class names, nor did the designers of said CGI models bother with that sort of background info.
The "NC" comes from concept art of the Sarajevo from John Eaves. Unfortunately Eaves has the penchant for giving weird markings on his concept art (i.e., "NCC-1254" for a ship design from the late TNG era), so anything he did on his concept art isn't really valid, and it didn't show up on the final CGI model anyway.
The Starfleet ships didn't. They didn't even have official class names, the first type being called the "warp delta" and the second type (the Intrepid-type) being called the "half-saucer" or some such thing. Some of the ECS freighters might have had registries though. The ECS Fortunate has the number ECS2801 on its hull, which could be a registry.
I'm really not getting all the dick-waggling you guys are doing about this subject. Scotty wanted to see the TOS Enterprise bridge. He specifically told the computer that he didn't want to see the bridges of the A, B, C, or D, and he gave the TOS ship's registry number. So the computer showed him the TOS ship. What's to argue about here? is it about the "five Federation starships" comment? That would be the Ent-nil, the A, B, C, and D. Again, what's the argument?
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